Woman Recalled 'What She Could' After Date With Former Teacher In Boardman Local Schools

June 9, 2011 Edition

Jay Dana

A Center Middle School teacher, Jay Dana, who was slated to retire at the end of the current school year, was relieved of his teaching duties on May 20, and did not return to the classroom.
According to Boardman Local School Supt. Frank Lazzeri, Mr. Dana took the remainder of the school year on a medical leave.
A day before, according to Boardman Police Department records, Mr. Dana showed-up unannounced during the early evening hours at a Huntington Dr. address.
A woman who lived at the address called police, telling Ptl. Paul Poulos and Ptl. John Gocala a man “with whom she had one date...startled her by showing up at her residence...unexpectedly.”
The woman told police she looked out her side glass door to see Mr. Dana standing there and “that she did not want to talk to him and to leave.”
Mr. Dana was reported to have left the residence when the woman’s son rode up their driveway on his bike.
“Mr. Dana left in an unknown direction, on foot,” Ptl. Gocala reported.
According to records of the Boardman Police Department, Mr. Dana was the subject of two police reports in 2006.
On Sept. 13, 2006 a 42-year-old woman a source said was from Canfield, told police she had been the victim of a date rape.
She told police that Mr. Dana picked her up for a date and while traveling to Ben’s Restaurant in Berlin Center to pick-up a food order, Mr. Dana gave her a carafe of vodka and cranberry juice.
“He drank a Coors Light...They picked-up food” before returning to Boardman, according to a police report.
Once in Mr. Dana’s driveway, the woman told police her date told her he was going to get her more to drink and wanted to take her for a ride in his car to show her something.
According to the police report, the woman was taken to a parking lot “in an unknown location, where he told her she needed to eat.
“Mr. Dana then pointed to a spot on the carafe and stated ‘drink this much,’” the woman told police, recalling the couple then went back to Mr. Dana’s residence.
The woman told police she did not recall details “beyond this point.”
She told police that she could recall being “violently sick on his floor while lying naked “ and Mr. Dana helping her to the bathroom “where she again vomited violently” and he “slapping her naked buttocks and telling her to get up.”
The woman told police about twelve hours after the date began that Mr. Dana took her back to her residence “where he put her on a chair on the back porch and left.”
When she awakened she discovered she wasn’t wearing underwear and called Mr. Dana and asked if they had been intimate because she could not recall anything.
“Mr. Dana stated yes they were intimate,” according to the police report.
She concluded her report to police stating she felt she had been drugged and the victim of date rape.
Her clothes were taken for testing and as evidence, police said.
On Oct. 30, 2006, Boardman police were called to St. Charles Church, 7345 Westview Dr., about 10:00 a.m. where a female employee claimed she was being harassed by Mr. Dana and the woman had locked herself in an office.
Ptl. Phil Merlo answered the call and described the woman as “very panicked and excited.”
Ptl. Merlo said he found Mr. Dana exiting the church and placed him in the back of his cruiser, while he checked to determine if the woman had any protection orders filed.
Apparently there were none and as Ptl. Merlo reported, “Mr. Dana was subsequently released minutes later and issued a criminal trespass warning for the property at St. Charles Church at the request of the pastoral staff.”
About the same time frame, there is a record in the Mahoning County Court that a woman had sought an ex-parte hearing on a request for a civil protection order against Mr. Dana on Oct. 13, 2006.
In an affidavit for the order, the woman says “I went out with Jay Dana on a date and he used a date rape drug on me...I am not allowed to say much about this because of the investigation.”
The request for the protection order was subsequently dismissed when the woman failed to show up for a hearing on the matter.
Mr. Dana formerly resided at 7877 Walnut St. in Boardman prior to moving to Firestone Farms in Colmbiana within the last two years, after he married Michele Dana.
The 44-year-old woman died last Christmas day.
At the time of her death, Mr. Dana called Columbiana police saying he and his wife had been playing a drinking game on Christmas Eve.
“We went to sleep and now I can’t get her to wake up,” Mr. Dana said in a 9-1-1 call on Christmas day.